My throat tightened, and I felt the familiar burn in my eyes that happened right before I was about to burst into tears. “Thanks,” I said in the clearest voice I could muster. Then I let myself out into the cold once again.
14
Back in the basement of Floorboard Lit, I dumped O’Connor’s computer into Lauren’s lap. “Here,” I said, dropping onto the nearby couch. I closed my eyes for a minute, savoring the soothing darkness of the basement, and listened to Lauren boot up O’Connor’s machine. “It’s password protected.”
“That won’t be a problem,” responded Lauren.
“I assumed as much.”
“What did the wife say?”
I massaged my temples with the tips of my fingers. “She doesn’t know anything past the fact that O’Connor was hiding something.”
“Did you tell her—?”
“That he’s dead? No. That’s not exactly something you can easily slip into conversation over coffee and scones.”
The tapping of Lauren’s fingers across the keyboard of O’Connor’s laptop resonated throughout the room. “She’s going to find out eventually. I mean, we are searching for his body after all.”
“Mm.”
“Not to mention, you should probably be the one to break the bad news,” Lauren went on. “You’re the only person who knows about O’Connor that actually cares about his wife. It’s the decent thing to do—”
“Lauren,” I interrupted, my eyes snapping open. “Nix the lecture. I’ll worry about Eileen later. For now, she’s safe, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Fine. Have it your way. By the way, all of O’Connor’s files on this computer are encrypted. It’s going to be a bitch to access them.”
I sat up. “You got past his password already?”
She picked up the laptop and brought it over, plunking down next to me on the couch and curling her feet up beneath her like a cat. “That was child’s play. This stuff, though? O’Connor really knew what he was doing. I don’t think I gave him enough credit before.”
“Can you still get to the files?” I asked, peeking at the screen. My computer capabilities didn’t extend beyond the basics. Without Lauren’s expertise, I would’ve been at a loss.
“I think so, but it’s going to take me a while.” She closed the laptop and reached into her back pocket. “Here, take this.”
It was a New York driver’s license with my face and someone else’s name on it. I wrinkled my nose. “Who’s Elizabeth Ramy?”
“Your new identity,” explained Lauren. “Temporarily, at least. Your interview with Paulson Media is at four o’clock. Don’t blow it.”
“The reach of your forgery capabilities is truly stunning.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Lauren. “Also, since you can’t walk into an office looking like that, I ran back to my dorm and grabbed you a more appropriate outfit. I figure we’re about the same size.”
“Looking like what, exactly?”
“Like you haven’t showered or changed your clothes in several days,” said Lauren, eyeballing my greasy hair. “I have dry shampoo too.”
It took Lauren a good half hour to make me over for my fake job interview. I squeezed into the borrowed pencil skirt and button-up blouse and even let Lauren sweep my dirty hair up into some resemblance of a bun, but I drew the line at Lauren’s winged-eyeliner suggestion. I would have enough to worry about walking into enemy territory without the threat of smudging my makeup.
“How do we know that some BRS member isn’t going to recognize me the second I walk into the office?” I asked Lauren.
“None of the active BRS members work at Paulson,” explained Lauren. “Besides, I checked in at BRS while I was on campus. They aren’t monitoring this office, which probably means they think they’ve hidden the body well enough not to worry about it.”
“What makes you think I can find it then?”
“Sheer determination,” replied Lauren, adjusting a bobby pin at the top of my head to tame a wayward strand of hair. “Besides, you were the one who managed to break in to BRS headquarters all on your own. That’s only happened once before, and from what I know, the Raptors silenced that person very quickly.”
“You’ve mentioned that before. Who was it?”
Lauren shrugged. “We don’t talk about it. The Raptors are too proud. We hate admitting our weak spots.”
“Go figure,” I muttered.
“Just see what you can dig up at Paulson,” said Lauren as she stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Who knows? It might be a complete bust. But if it’s not, we could be one step closer to finding Wes and taking down the society.”
It wasn’t a long drive to Paulson Media. I arrived fifteen minutes early for my interview, which gave me plenty of time to panic. We had no plan in place to discover whatever BRS had planted at Paulson, and it seemed unlikely that Lauren’s suggestion to simply have a look around would yield any concrete results. The office was located on the twelfth floor of one of the larger buildings downtown, and I rode up the elevator in anxious silence, tugging down the hem of my skirt. When the doors pinged open, spilling me out into the lobby of Paulson Media, I took a deep breath and walked over to the receptionist’s desk.
“Hi, I’m Ni—Elizabeth Ramy,” I corrected quickly. Covert ops weren’t my specialty. “I have an interview at four.”
The receptionist, a rotund woman with bright pink cheeks and horn-rimmed glasses whose name block read Carly Jenkins, glanced at her computer monitor. “Ramy, was it? Ah, yes, here you are. Right this way.”
I followed the receptionist down a long hallway, doing the best I could to convincingly answer the series of questions she aimed at me.
“Are you a Waverly graduate?”
“I sure am.”
“Paulson favors Waverly alumni,” she said, beaming. “You’re in good hands. Have you always had an interest in working with a media company?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes, but
